Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/563

550 this, from the fact that there once existed in the north aisle a seat, on which was carved the effigy of a pedlar with his pack and dog, and his wife looking over the door of a shop; the latter feature in the picture being accounted for on the ground that John’s wife had a very natural desire to have her memory as much as possible associated with that of a husband whom she must have admired so greatly. Many years ago, when the nave and aisles were repaved, this and many other carved seats were removed, and now form a piece of patchwork, designated the Tinker’s Seat, in the chapel of the north transept, by a visit to which, the curious may convince themselves of the veracity of my story. 2em

clanging steeple dins the air, The banners flutter gay, The maidens scatter roses fair Along their homeward way;

And courtly bends the gallant, proud To lead so sweet a bride; She turns upon the greeting crowd No gentle look aside;

No tender glance of love apart To her high lord the while, For memory of one trusting heart That thrill’d ’neath such a smile,

He who first dared to seek her love,— To seek it? ay, to win,— Whom now (O pain all pain above!) To think of is to sin.

He turns away, too stern for tears, With haggard looks and wan, A simple boy, it seems, in years, In grief an agèd man.

Long life may yet be his, to give The wreck of faith full scope, Long years of suffering to live And nurse the widow’d hope:

Long, long unsolac’d vigils yet, Visions of sadden’d eyes To mock the mourner’s mad regret With guilty sympathies.

For seems not ever life too long That lingers on a waste, And such a sorrow’s hand too strong To be full soon displaced?

Not falling on some foreign strand, In battle’s reddest glow, With dinted brand in fainting hand, And face towards the foe;

Not sinking with some shatter’d ship, Were it so hard to part From her whose name were on the lip, Whose image on the heart:

Not bending o’er the hopeless bed, Watching the dear one die,— Kneeling beside the dear one dead, Were half the agony

That sears the soul, and burns the brow, At consciousness of this, That lips once his are shrinking now Beneath a barter’d kiss!

beats Greenwich out and out under the head of fish-dinners. What marvellous results may yet be obtained from the opening up, as it is called, of Japan! The question hitherto has only been considered from a commercial or political point of view. This low ground should be abandoned at once. There is far too much buying and selling, as it is, going on in the world. As for politicians, they are really becoming a public nuisance. Let any one who doubts the assertion spend an evening in the agreeable society of a second or third-rate member of the House of Commons, or of an earnest party man, and if he does not, as the result of the experiment, admit that his evening has been painfully mis-spent, may I never assist at a white-bait dinner again! Let us attend to our fish.

We are informed upon the very highest authority—upon the authority of a mouth-witness who enjoyed ample opportunities at Jeddo itself of carrying on his philosophico-gastronomic investigations into this most important subject, that for one manner which the Western nations have of dressing fish, the Japanese have twenty or fifty methods of dealing with these marine delicacies—these succulent fruits of the ocean which we handle in so monotonous a way.

It is not a question of sauce.

That is, under the head of “Sauces” we are called upon to consider a very important part of the subject—a most interesting subdivision I grant—but this is far from being the real question at issue. I wish I could speak with more precision; but the fact is that my informant when at Jeddo neglected his duty to his country, and to the human race. He did not go further than to verify the fact that the fish dinners of Japan are a somewhat which a good man at the end of a well-spent life may dream of as possible under more beatific conditions of existence than those allotted to suffering humanity upon the surface of this planet. He is indeed a man whom to name would be to point him out to the admiration of his countrymen—but, alas! that there should be a speck in so shining and remarkable a character! When at Jeddo he did not exhaust the subject of Fish Stews!

He remarked indeed that sometimes in lusciousness—sometimes in delicate simplicity—they differed from all that he had tasted before in this kind. Some recommended themselves to the more grave and poetical faculties, as would a sonata of Beethoven to the appreciation of an accomplished musician; others fluttered delicately round the entranced palate as when the music of the Seville Barber, winnowing the air, glides like the sky-1ark’s song into the delighted brain of the judicious connoisseur. Others again were examples of grand simplicity—like the sweet conceptions of our own Purcell. Finally, others, Oh, marvel! Oh,